The official line is that we're living in a golden age of television, a time when brilliant writers are luring world-class actors to daring new shows that win awards and delight audiences around the world. Shows that push the boundaries of the medium. Shows that challenge cinema as the dominant cultural form of the age. Novelistic shows, full of twists and turns and arcs that test viewers by refusing to adhere to genre convention.

And this is true. However, it is also true that man cannot live on quality drama alone. There is only so much of, say, Borgen that one can take before it all gets too much. You find yourself either shuffling around with your brow furrowed as you wrestle with the weighty thematic issues of whatever you're binge-watching, or trapped in a desperate cycle of increasingly hyperbolic praise for a show that you only really like because a broadsheet newspaper said you should. When this happens, you need crap. You need a palate-cleanser.

You know the sort of shows I'm talking about. Cake Boss, for example, is the perfect antidote to Game of Thrones. Sometimes, when you've watched 350 different but identically named characters from 200 barely distinguishable regions shout frilly exposition at each other for four straight hours, you just want to watch a man make a cake. Possibly a cake shaped like a Transformer. Possibly while doing all he can to push the limits of New Jersey's workplace harassment laws. It gives your mind a moment off, better allowing you to appreciate Game of Thrones when you return to it.

Palate-cleansing shows can also be a useful tonal instrument. Some of the later episodes of Breaking Bad contained moments of such unbearable tension that – and I swear I'm not the only person to have done this – I had to pause the action and take a moment to steel myself for the further horrors to come. Watching more than one episode in a single sitting would have been unthinkable. Thank goodness, then, for the buffer that is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. For a while, I used that show purely to take the edge off Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad taught you that the world was malicious and out to get you. It's Always Sunny teaches you that Danny DeVito is a funny drunk. It's a useful counterbalance.

And it also works from the other direction. For example, I would be a quivering wreck of a man if the last series of Homeland wasn't shown on Sundays at 9pm. This is because the last series of The X Factor was shown on Sundays at 8pm. And I was professionally obliged to watch The X Factor. All of it. The woeful decision-making of bootcamp. The non-stop shrieking cabaret of glitter and ineptitude that was the live shows. Louis Walsh. After that torrent of deliberate cack, the skronky jazz of the Homeland theme tune felt like slipping into a warm bath. And I'm talking about the third series of Homeland here, which was an aggressively dumb television programme. It was like watching a spin-off of Homeland written by three-year-olds. But, compared to The X Factor, it was The Ascent of Man. A diet of nothing but The X Factor would have finished me off. At least Homeland reminded me that I had a brain, even if that brain belonged to a stupid person.

I cannot possibly be alone in resorting to TV palate-cleansers. What are yours? Leave your guilty secrets below.